TALLINN, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Estonian police are seeking to recover 152 million euros ($178 mln) in a lawsuit filed on Thursday against digital security firm Gemalto, following a recall last year when security flaws were found in citizen ID cards produced by the firm.

The vulnerabilities to hacker attacks found in government- issued ID cards supplied by the Franco-Dutch company marked an embarrassing setback for Estonia, which has billed itself as the world’s most digitalised “e-government”.

Most of its 1.3 million people use electronic ID cards to access public services digitally.

Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) said in a statement Gemalto had created private key codes for individual cards, leaving the government IDs vulnerable to external cyber attack, rather than embedding it on the card’s chip as promised.

“It turned out that our partner had violated this principle for years, and we see this as a very serious breach of contract,” PPA’s deputy director-general Krista Aas said in the statement.

The PPA also said it planned to file separate claims for other breaches of the contract. Estonia had used Gemalto and its predecessor for its ID cards since 2002, but replaced the manufacturer with Idemia after it found serious security flaws last year.